Jesse Kline: In the new Canada, the web browses you

This fall, legislatures in both Canada and the U.S. are set to vote on bills that would force private Internet service providers (ISPs) to store information about their customers, in order to allow the government to spy on its citizens. With an increasing amount of our everyday activity being conducted online — from banking, to shopping, communicating with friends and family, dating, learning and reading — allowing the state to monitor all our activities in cyberspace sets a dangerous precedent.

Last week, a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved a bill that would force ISPs to store detailed information on customers and their activities. This would likely include retaining names, addresses, phone numbers, financial information and IP addresses.

The bill is being touted as a means of protecting children from pornography, but tracking your identity, along with what sites you’re visiting, and handing that information over to the government upon request, has nothing to do with porn.

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“The bill is mislabeled,” Congressman John Conyers told CNET News. “This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It’s creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.”

Indeed, pornography is perfectly legal and the logs would be available to law enforcement officials investigating all crimes. They may even be accessible to people involved in civil litigation, in order to gather information on ex-lovers and disgruntled employees. The legislation even has a provision exempting U.S. marshals tracking sex offenders from obtaining a court order before forcing ISPs to hand over private information.

If the bill becomes law, it will have the same effect as the gun registry in Canada — violating the rights of law-abiding citizens, while criminals find ways to avoid it entirely. It will be easy enough for individuals intent on committing crimes to log onto the public wi-fi network at the local coffee shop, or use a cellular network (wireless carriers were able to lobby their way out of the bill). There are also plenty of freely available software tools that can encrypt data and facilitate anonymous activities.

Canada’s Conservative government has been trying to pass legislation that goes a step further. Previous incarnations of the legislation died on the order paper for various reasons, but there will be nothing stopping the new majority government from passing it in the fall. In fact, the Conservatives are expected to include the measures in an omnibus crime bill, meaning Parliament will not get a chance to scrutinize or debate it separately from the rest of the package.

The so-called “lawful access” legislation would force ISPs to disclose customer information to the government — on demand and without obtaining a warrant.

“This will allow law enforcement to identify individuals involved in a striking array of online activity including anonymous political opinions made in blog posts or newspaper comments, location data posted online from a smart phone, social networking activity, private online instant message or email exchanges,” wrote NDP MP Charlie Angus in a letter to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews.

It would also require ISPs to install real-time surveillance equipment on their networks, which will cost millions of dollars. But who’s going to pay for big brother to spy on us? The answer to that is not entirely clear, but taxpayers will likely be forced to shoulder some of the burden and the rest of it will fall on private businesses. Smaller ISPs could even be driven out of business, which is not a good thing in a market that is already uncompetitive.

It is not hard to see the serious speech and privacy implications of such a law (not to mention the violation of private property rights). Might as well just put a camera in every bedroom and feed it directly to the prime minister’s office. Welcome to 1984 folks. If you forget to sign the guest book, don’t worry. They know exactly who you are.

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